Home assistant on Synology: Docker vs VM

Well…I give up. I tried during 2hours to run zigbee2mqtt docker.

I installed Home assistant to have a easy system to maintain…I don’t have the time and knowledge to manually do all those steps.

I understand It’s synology fault, It’s a pitty they don’t update their docker :confused:

I guess I’ll buy a RPI4 or try another system that is fully supported on my synology.

@Francois -
Something else is going on with your VM setup, if I have to guess.

DS218+, with Intel Celeron J3355 (Dual Core - 2.0 GHz/2.5 GHz Turbo), should have enough horsepower to handle HAOS. Searching around the forum here, for example, I can see a couple of data points hovering at 5-15% on CPU also.

I guess you have tried to increase RAM so that to run VM? DS218+ only has got 2GB to start with, and then HAOS VM is recommend to allocate 2GB per install guide.

What part of “unsupported method” do you not understand? The official installation methods of HA are OS, Supervised, Container, and Core. The method you were/are using is a community driven work around to get HA Supervised installed in an unconventional way. The two officially supported methods of installation on a Synology are Container and (to a degree) Core.

I’ve got a DS220+ with 8Gb of extra RAM, and experimented with both HAOS on VMM and HA in Docker. With VMM the Syno goes nuts, especially on CPU. On average CPU with VMM is 10x CPU with Docker. Even with multiple Dockers (for MQTT, Grafana etc.) CPU is constantly between 1 and 3%, and with VMM it never gets below 30% …

So, deleted the VMM and my whole system now based on containers

Yes I understand Container is the only supported method on Synology.
But I think that most of the people were not aware of that when they installed this supervised version. Lot of people now have a problem with their setup.

Same here DS218+ and 10Gb of RAM.

Just installing VMM is using 15-20% of CPU, without running any image…
Running the home assistant VM is working, not too slow (without any plugin) I gave It 4Gb of RAM.
But I don’t want my NAS to run at 80-100% non stop

Wow OK I didn’t expect this. Is this considered typical?

I have a 2-disk entry-level NAS (but non-Synology) with the same CPU, also a 2018 model. That box could/would run single HAOS VM image at 2-3% of CPU. So I thought things cannot be too drastically different. I was wrong, it seems.

Hi everyone!
As I am was thinking about switching my NAS to a DS220+ because it can run my HA + Grafana + Zigbee2MQTT etc. without the daily fear of the SD-Card dying, let me sum this up, that i understood right:

  1. I can install HA quiet easy in a docker container but just without the supervisor. Performance/Recources is good but if I want to install Add-ons it needs lots of tweaking and knowledge and much TIME - so nothing for me…
  2. I can install HA in a VM, everything should work there including easy maintainance for noobs with the supervisor but the CPU-usage is (strangely) exorbitant, so not recommended…
  3. HA in docker on the NAS supervised doesnt’t exist.

… so I best leave my NAS as it is an go for a dedicated OS on a e.g. Odroid N2+? Whats your opinion? Thanks.

Ture statements on all 3 accounts.

But… before you go buy something new, why not give the VM a try? Download the image, fire up VMM, give the HAOS VM some quick test drive, and monitor the CPU% along the way…?

Maybe yours being a DS220+, which is presumably 2 years apart from the DS218+ iteration, would run just fine. Maybe Synology has improved its VMM implementation somehow…?

There’s a thread recently on VM install also. Report your observations over there if you want to.

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Thank you k8gg. I can’t give VM on a synology NAS a try myself, because my NAS ist not a “+”, so not capable of running a vm.

Meanwhile I’m at the point that I wont go for a Synology to host my HA - sharing my thoughts:
As I want to change my HA-Hardware-setup away from my older Raspberry running from SD-Card, I thought it to be a nice and clean solution for runing my HA, because 1) it’s a quiet powerful hardware 2) running anyway and 3) with optimal reliability and backup features. I have to take into my consideration the money I want to spend, the performance and reliability I get for this and the time I need to spend for setup and maintainance. As I was investigating about the topic HA on Synology during the last days I got away from the idea of ​​running my HA on a NAS and tend to a solution runnig it on its dedicated hardware because the time I need to spend seems to be way bigger, than I thougt. For exampe new problems ahead with the update to Synology DSM 7 (Anyone installed Hass.io on Synology DSM 7? - #6 by Volker_Steiger) as well as the issue with the high CPU-Loads.
If I go e.g. with a RPi 4 8GB + SDD I will have a good enogh performane for the next few years, a little less reliability but I can be sure that the software will stay supported very well and user-friendly for this platform, as it is the main used one.

Hi everybody,

I know this is a old thread but I think the conclusion is miss leading. I tried the VMM way on my DS218+. CPU usage of VMM + HA running (not configured yet, I can set the username right now) is by 5%. Which is IMHO not that much for a hole OS with a full docker installation running. So I can’t confirm the high CPU usage.

Is it possible that you just looked at the host CPU usage? Mine is between 40% and 60% because of the AV scanner working in background.

I have a VM running because always thinking if I would switch back to Docker (previously I used the image from Frederike with supervisor which was terminated long ago). I am also using a 281+ here.
Currently I have some issues with live streams from camera’s. I thought it might have to do with the 218+ performance.
I decided to do a little test.
With VM runnig CPU was 71% and RAM 66% (10gb in total) When I switched VM off CPU was down to 68-70% and RAM to solid 20%.

Here is my setup and system stats on a Synology DS720+ running DSM 7 and RAM upgraded to 10GB total.

  1. HomeBridge is running 24/7 using the native install (not docker)
  2. In Docker I am just running the Unifi controller (btw this works amazingly well for people that own some Unifi gear without a dedicated security key or dream machine)
  3. Surveillance Station runs 24/7 with 6 connected cameras. Interestingly, it seems like most of these system resources are accounted for upfront, meaning that opening up Live View or other streams doesn’t tax the cpu/ram any further.
  4. Also running file backup, indexer, and Video Station sporadically

Also have a Hubitat as the central hub, but obviously this device doesn’t really impact nas performance.

With the above setup I am at:
CPU: ~10%
RAM: ~15%
I only see the CPU spike up occasionally for certain activities, but the RAM usage rarely goes up


I have HomeAssistant running in VM and set to use 2 cores with 3GB of ram (I’m not running much through HA, just a few dashboards, so I don’t need a ton of RAM). Could probably drop it down to 1 core, but the more RAM the better. 2 GB of ram would work but be tight, 2.5GB would be perfect but you can only allocate in full increments.

With VM running I am at:
CPU: ~19-30%
RAM: ~50% (keep in mind that 3GB is automatically allocated whether HA is using all of it in the VM)
I don’t notice any slowdown or negative impact on any other services while using the VM


Overall I really like running as many things off the NAS as possible because after all, it is a 24/7 server and often under utilized for how much power/storage it has (compared to a pi).

My only complaint is that when you have issues, not as many people on the forums can offer advice because it is used less than Pi or other install methods. Also, there seems to be some issues with seeing IP cameras because of the extra layer of the VM on the NAS. Maybe I’ve just had bad luck because my cameras are a few years older…

Anyway, hope these stats help some new users who are deciding how to set up their systems!

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I have observation that Syno CPU usage jump high when VM Manager GUI is running. When it’s closed, then CPU usage is quite normal. My DS218+ is under Telegram/Grafana monitoring and it doesn’t show any criminal numbers .


Running HAOS VMM and couple of docker containers.
But overall performance is not so good. For example HA server reboot after version upgrade usually take about 10 minutes.

I agree, Fancois, without Supervisor you can’t install any add-ons other than than the 10-15 that are of no use.

Besides add-ons, the more important issue is usb devices supporting on DSM7. Because I need one USB modem stick and USB DAC works with HA, after upgraded to DSM7, I had run HassOS VM for a long period, and had configured a cpu load sensor, it’s glad to say that the cpu load comes down to a normal level after couple of days, as low as 7% on idle.

I changed from Docker to VM on Synology. Silly question, but how can I edit the config file? :thinking:

Under HAOS, you have add-ons. So you could go to settings → add-ons → click the blue add-on store button at the lower-right corner, and use either this:
image
… or this:
image

And then you can find your configuration.yaml to edit.

But wait - probably should ask this first: What kind of this “config file” are we talking about? I assume configuration.yaml, but if you are talking about the VM config file, or something else, then you’d have to consult Synology.

Yes, I just want to edit configuration.yaml.
Thank you for explanation :slightly_smiling_face:

Are you still looking for this? I believe if you map the /config folder of the container to a folder in the Docker host, you’ll find the configuration files there and can edit it with any editor on your host.